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It's rare to find a film that goes for broke and says, 'To hell with the consequences.'

Roger Ebert

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Roger Ebert
Age: 70 †
Born: 1942
Born: June 18
Died: 2013
Died: April 4
Film Critic
Journalist
Presenter
Reporter
Screenwriter
Writer
Urbana
Illinois
Roger Joseph Ebert
Consequence
Goes
Says
Hell
Film
Find
Rare
Consequences
Broke

More quotes by Roger Ebert

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Occasionally an unsuspecting innocent will stumble into a movie like this and send me an anguished postcard, asking how I could possibly give a favorable review to such trash. My stock response is Ebert's Law, which reads: A movie is not about what it is about. It is about how it is about it.
Roger Ebert
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Dirty Love wasn't written and directed, it was committed. Here is a film so pitiful, it doesn't rise to the level of badness. It is hopelessly incompetent... I am not certain that anyone involved has ever seen a movie, or knows what one is.
Roger Ebert
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It's a good question, because a movie isn't good or bad based on its politics. It's usually good or bad for other reasons, though you might agree or disagree with its politics.
Roger Ebert
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Movies are like a machine that generates empathy.
Roger Ebert
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When I write, I fall into the zone many writers, painters, musicians, athletes, and craftsmen of all sorts seem to share: In doing something I enjoy and am expert at, deliberate thought falls aside and it is all just THERE. I think of the next word no more than the composer thinks of the next note.
Roger Ebert
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I am utterly bored by celebrity interviews. Most celebrities are devoid of interest.
Roger Ebert
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It's not often a thriller keeps me wound up as well as 'Headhunters' did. I knew I was being manipulated and didn't care. It was a pleasure to see how well it was being done.
Roger Ebert
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I do not fear death. I know it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe there is nothing on the other side of death to fear.
Roger Ebert
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Socrates told us, the unexamined life is not worth living. I think he's calling for curiosity, more than knowledge. In every human society at all times and at all levels, the curious are at the leading edge.
Roger Ebert
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Praise without merit is more harmful than unearned criticism.
Roger Ebert
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Crowds can be frightening. They have a way of impressing the low, base taste upon their members. Watching the way thousands of people in his audience could not think for themselves, could not find the courage to allow their ordinary feelings of decency and taste to prevail, I understood better how demagogues are possible.
Roger Ebert
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Blockbusters run the mainstream industry. We may never again have a decade like the 1970s, when directors were able to find such freedom.
Roger Ebert
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The movie cheerfully offends all civilized notions of taste, decorum, manners and hygiene... The movie is vulgar? Vulgarity is when we don't laugh. When we laugh, it's merely human nature.
Roger Ebert
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How quickly do we grow accustomed to wonders. I am reminded of the Isaac Asimov story Nightfall, about the planet where the stars were visible only once in a thousand years. So awesome was the sight that it drove men mad. We who can see the stars every night glance up casually at the cosmos and then quickly down again, searching for a Dairy Queen.
Roger Ebert
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I was instructed long ago by a wise editor, If you understand something you can explain it so that almost anyone can understand it. If you don't, you won't be able to understand your own explanation. That is why 90% of academic film theory is bullshit. Jargon is the last refuge of the scoundrel.
Roger Ebert
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There are often lists of the great living male movie stars. How often do you see the name of Nicolas Cage? He should always be up there. He's daring and fearless in his choice of roles, and unafraid to crawl out on a limb, saw it off and remain suspended in air.
Roger Ebert
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The film argues to the young that the old were young once, too, and contain within them all that the young know, and more.
Roger Ebert
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Of what use is freedom of speech to those who fear to offend?
Roger Ebert
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A movie isn't good or bad based on its politics. It's usually good or bad for other reasons, though you might agree or disagree with its politics.
Roger Ebert
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If there is such a thing as a lock on an Oscar nomination, ... Hoffman has one.
Roger Ebert